Optical switches may inter-operate in accordance with the (Fibre Channel) FC protocol. Such FC switches exchange messages with each other in accordance with the FC protocol to establish an FC link between the switches. The exchange of messages is referred to as “FC initialization” or an “FC initialization phase,” and may take as much as 10 seconds to complete. Detection of a failure on an established FC link, that interrupts optical signals conveyed by the link, almost immediately, e.g., within a few milliseconds (ms), triggers FC initialization. FC link failure failover protection may restore physical connections that support the interrupted FC link in under 50 ms, but the triggered FC initialization will delay the full reestablishment of the FC link until the FC initialization is complete. Such a delay is inconvenient and wastes available communication resources.